Dinner time with kids can often be chaotic. I am a parent with 3 young children, a busy household, work and extracurricular activities, and I know it can be a challenge to get dinner on the table, make it healthy, keep my kids occupied and keep myself sane through dinner preparation, dinner time and cleaning up. To help our family get through dinner time we use a few strategies to engage our kids, have fun, and enjoy our family time.

It is easy to get flustered and focus on getting your kids to eat, not to mention to have a moment to stuff food in your own mouth, while trying to stop catastrophic spills and messes from happening. But there is a way to make dinner time a family time that you and your kids love.

You can get your kids to calm down, eat their dinner and be polite, with a few simple ideas.

First, stick to, or create, a dinnertime routine. For example, have your older kids help set the table or get everyone drinks, and then when dinner is served everyone can sit down. Next, if you have your kids help you make the meal, they will be very excited to taste the food, even if it has ingredients they usually don’t eat. Get them involved with the meal (a theme or 1 dish wonder or playing a game). If you tell a story, or play a game during dinner, set up rules that kids have to follow in order to play (sit quietly, eat bites of food, stay seated and so on).

Play a Game during Dinner

At first it might seem that the dinner table is the absolute worst place to play during dinner. But with kids the goal is to get through dinner without a melt-down, everyone eating some of their food and to spend time together as a family. There is a place for conversational, formal-type dinners, but I do not think that helps to keep your kids, especially young ones, engaged at dinner time. Set some rules so that everyone knows they must be sitting in their chair and continuing to eat while the game is played. Here are a few Game ideas. 

• Name Something that Is: Color, Shape, Food grown in ground, on a tree, or any other group or things.
• I Spy: Play the usual I spy game but everyone has to be able to see it from their seats.
• What Is It? Someone says 2 to 3 clues and each person takes a turn guessing what it is. (ex. do animals or foods that are easy for kids to guess).
• 20 Questions: Guess the Animal (Does it live in the water? Does it have wings?)
• Tell a Story: Let everyone add to the story, or take turns telling stories.

Themed Dinners

Kids love to make things up and to be a part of something fun. Think of the type of food you want to make and create a theme around it that your kids will love. Some ideas are: 

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